I was a sports reporter for The Ticker in
the 1953–54 and 1954–55 school
years and sports editor of the paper in
the Fall 1955 semester. After graduation in
June 1956, and three years in the Navy, I
embarked on a journalism career, which
included two years at the New York Times and 25 years at the Wall Street Journal,
where I was a reporter, columnist, bureau
chief, and foreign correspondent.
I retired from the WSJ at
the end of 1990.

My experience at The Ticker was
invaluable training.
We had extremely
high standards in
our editorial content.
We modeled
ourselves after the Times, right down to a
very demanding regimen
that all our headlines had to fit tightly and
that no line could end in a preposition,
like "to," or a conjunction, like "and."
And, of course, there were our April Fool's
issues, one of which lampooned "The
Grim Gray Times"!

Dow Jones & Co., which publishes the Wall Street Journal, also operated the Dow
Jones Newswire, commonly known as "the
Ticker," to which all reporters were
required to contribute. I don't
know how many times I
cracked to my colleagues:
"I've been out
of college for years,
but I'm still writing
for The Ticker!"
I hope The Ticker staff of today learns
as much as we did—
and has as much fun.